


Fitz's Father's Days

by queercapwriting (queergirlwriting)



Series: Of Chemicals and First Loves [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, FitzSkimmons - Freeform, Minor Leo Fitz/Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, also coulson is everyone's dad because i mean, also may being the sweetest, anyway, as always, because she loves fitz so damn much and they always do it so subtly but it's gorgeous and i just, mack x fitz, my bbies, obvi, trans!Fitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 10:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19249216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queergirlwriting/pseuds/queercapwriting
Summary: Fitz, Mack, and Daisy all have difficult father's days. And they all get each other through.Fitzskimmons, Fitz/Mack, Fitzsimmons, however you want to read it, it's kind of all there. Because it's all beautiful.





	Fitz's Father's Days

He didn’t talk about it. 

At all.

Jemma had gathered a lot, over the years.

How his father had called him stupid, worthless, weak. Not good enough. How he had been a decent enough child until he tried to live up to being his son. 

He would never, his father said, ever, be his son.

He had no son.

His son was dead before he even called himself Leopold.

Because he didn’t want to be like his father.

He didn’t want to treat women like his father had treated his mother, and he didn’t want to approach the world like he was entitled to it.

He wouldn’t. 

He would refuse.

He would not become the man he named himself after.

He chose his name as a reminder. And he chose his name as a last-ditch attempt to earn his father’s approval.

He didn’t realize, until he met Jemma Simmons, that maybe, just maybe, his father’s approval wasn’t something he had to earn at all.

But he didn’t talk about Father’s Day.

Didn’t acknowledge it, really.

Jemma would find a private spot to call her father, and then she would find Fitz. Some years, she would say nothing, and sit with him on the floor in front of his bed, and she would just hold his hand. Other years, she would find him playing Halo, and would take up the spare controller, and play with him. 

When Skye became Daisy, she joined Fitz’s silence.

And one Father’s Day, she let Fitz come with her. To see him. Her father. Just from a distance, across from the new life he’d made for himself. That SHIELD had given to him.

Fitz wouldn’t go see his own father. And Daisy didn’t ask why. But she stood with him, and she held his hand. He squeezed hers back, and he waited, quiet and patient, until Daisy was ready to go home. Together.

And Jemma had baked them terrible cookies when they came back, and even May put her hand on Fitz’s shoulder, then on his cheek, and told him anyone should be proud to have him as a son. 

Because no one had ever told May anything about Fitz’s father: but she was so observant, always, that no one had to.

Fitz was quiet about his father. So quiet.

But it all changed, after the Framework. For all of them.

After the Framework, Fitz had to talk about Father’s Day. He had no choice.

Because everyone knew, then. It was all exposed, then. A raw nerve, an open wound. A surgical incision inside himself that had infected an entire world, the entire team. His entire family.

And Mack.

Mack.

He’d created the Framework that had given Mack his Hope. And then had ripped it away.

So he did the hardest thing he’d ever done. Harder than refusing to join Hydra under threat of execution - no, that was easy, compared to this. Crying as SHIELD fell, as countless good people, kind people, were slaughtered, ready to join them instead of betraying their memories. Instead of becoming Hydra, a Nazi. Instead of becoming Ward. Or his father.

No. That decision had been easy. He’d been ready to die. And he would have.

But this. This was his atonement. Part of it, anyway, because he would never stop atoning. For becoming exactly what he’d once cried, silently, while refusing to become.

“Mack?” he knocked on his friend’s door.

Mack wiped his eyes and stood, but didn’t bother to try to hide that he’d been crying.

“Turbo.” He opened his eyes, and Fitz didn’t understand what kinds of forces could possibly have made Mack a good man in a world as horrific to him as this one. A world like this one, and a world like the Framework.

Maybe the two worlds weren’t so different, really. 

“I’m sorry, Mack,” was all he could say, because it was Father’s Day, and there was nothing else he could say.

He sat with him, hand in hand, neither of them knew how long. Only when Yo-Yo came to the door to tell Fitz that Daisy and Simmons were looking for him, that he should go, that she would sit with Mack, did he get up to face the other people that the ghost of his father - himself - had nearly killed. Over and over again.

“How’s he doing?” Daisy asked of Mack when Fitz walked into their bedroom, wringing his hands over and over and over.

“Better, maybe, than when you went to see him this morning. Yo-Yo’s with him now.”

“And how are we?” Jemma patted the bed next to her and Daisy, her head tilted slightly, tentatively. Almost nervous. Almost scared.

“You two are the last people I can whine to. About anything.”

“It’s not whining, Fitz. And I think you’ve done your penance,” Daisy told him, not for the first time. And she knew it wouldn’t be the last.

“I tortured you, Daisy,” Fitz reminded her, not for the first time. And he knew it wouldn’t be the last.

“Sit with us, Fitz. Please,” Jemma asked, and he couldn’t refuse her.

But he could stare at his hands and fidget like he always did, especially since he’d let his oxygen run out for Jemma.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It’s one of those rare, weird days off. We should be preparing that cake for Coulson, not -”

“Do you really think I should be anywhere near that cake prep? You’ve seen me in a kitchen, haven’t you?” Daisy grinned, and a trace of a smile flitted across Fitz’s face.

“You are good with a bottle opener, though.”

“Well, I mean. Beer is an important part of being an agent.”

“Extremely.”

“Definitely.”

The three chuckled, soft and sad. Jemma ran her hand through Fitz’s hair, and Daisy let her hand rest on his thigh.

“Today doesn’t have to be easy, Fitz. But you’re going to have to forgive yourself. You’re not him.”

“No. I was worse. I am worse.”

“You aren’t, Fitz. Listen to me.” Daisy turned his face toward hers, gentle and wide-eyed. “You are kind and gentle and crazy smart. And more than a little sexy.”

“Is this the time, Daisy?” Jemma asked, but she was smiling as she squeezed Daisy’s hand and kissed Fitz’s cheek.

“It’s always the time, Jemma,” Daisy winked, and Fitz blushed so hard her couldn’t help but laughing.

“There’s our Fitz,” Jemma smiled, tender and wanting. Fitz rubbed roughly at his eyes with his fists.

“You’re so gentle with the people you care about, Leopold.” Jemma used the name on purpose. Fitz gulped as she kissed one hand, and Daisy, the other.

“You can be gentler with yourself. You do deserve it,” Daisy insisted.

Fitz scoffed.

“You don’t think I’m like him?” he asked.

“I think you’re like no one in the world, Fitz,” Jemma told him while Daisy nodded. 

“And you’re doing alright? Today? Father’s Day and all,” Fitz turned to Daisy to ask.

“See? So sensitive,” Daisy booped his nose. “That’s the Fitz we all love.”

“Right. Well. I suppose you have decent enough taste.”

“We have excellent taste.”

“The best of all the tastes.”

“Wow, okay, now my mind is going other places.”

“Please don’t finish that thought,” May grinned wryly with her head in their bedroom door. “Yo-Yo and Mack are ready for Coulson’s surprise party.”

“And the cake?”

“Well Daisy had nothing to do with baking it, so it’s just fine.”

“I resent that.”

“Am I wrong?”

“… No.”

“Exactly. And Fitz?”

“Yeah, May?”

“If you ever want to, you’re going to make a beautiful father.”


End file.
